The Federal Court in Canada has overruled the Commissioner of Patents to find that Amazon’s 1-click patent is patentable subject matter in Canada, and that Canada’s patent act does not have an exclusion for business method patents. Here is a copy of the decision: Canadian 1-click decision. The claims found to be statutory are repeated below.The decision is an interesting read as it discusses jurisprudence from the US and Europe, including the recent Bilski decision, and rejects the “point of novelty” analysis in favor of viewing the claim as a whole to determine if a claim is statutory. The Court laid out that there are thus three important elements in the test for statutory subject matter:
i) it must not be a disembodied idea but have a method of practical application;
ii) it must be a new and inventive method of applying skill and knowledge; and
iii) it must have a commercially useful result:
Progressive Games, Inc. v. Canada (Commissioner of Patents), 177 F.T.R. 241 (T.D.) at para. 16, aff’d (2000), 9 C.P.R. (4th) 479 (F.C.A.).
